"You didn't…didn't call me."
"What for? You have the nose of a dog, my friend. I knew you'd be here."
"Ha, I have a dog nose." Geung sniffed like a bloodhound and walked to the storeroom to put on his apron. Canine sniffs and grunts and laughter emanated from behind the door. His condition was really only a problem to other people, those who felt uncomfortable around him, people like Judge Haeng. But Mr Geung pottered around inside his Down's Syndrome taking pleasure from simple things, enjoying the love he felt from his morgue family, doing his job. And his job was to assist Dr Comrade Siri. But the doctor couldn't help but notice there was something oddly different about Geung today. He decided he would bring it up once their work was done.
Siri held on to Dew's shoulders while Geung, in one glorious Excaliburic flourish, grabbed the handle bowl in both hands and yanked the epee from her chest. Siri looked at the congealed blood trail that led from her heart. He picked up the towel and spread it across her groin, lining up the stains like a piece of a large puzzle. It fitted but it didn't solve anything. He was almost convinced the blood on the towel had come from the deceased. It had clearly been on her lap at some stage. But, what he couldn't explain was why the towel was stained but had not been saturated by the considerable flow of blood that would have gushed from the wound. Nor could he imagine why it was on the floor when they discovered the body. There had been no blood on Dew's hands.
The autopsy took the standard two hours and produced no astounding revelations. She was fit, healthy, and had, at some stage, given birth. She had been killed almost immediately the sword pierced her heart and she had probably felt little pain. The murderer had either known exactly where to find the heart, and been skilful enough to impale it, or he had been very lucky. The shallow N or Z mark on her thigh was another matter. Siri knew it had not been inflicted by the sword as there had been very little bleeding, barely a trickle. The epee must have killed her first. But this meant the killer must have used a different weapon to sign his work. From the width of the cut and the condition of the skin, Siri assumed a small flat-bladed knife had been used, perhaps a sharp penknife. But it was a hurried, botched job. A last-minute thought perhaps? No. The killer had gone to the trouble of bringing the knife. Why hurry the final touch? Was he disturbed? Frightened? Disgusted at what he'd done? Siri hated autopsies that left more questions than answers.
For want of a police forensic investigation unit, Siri took the liberty of dusting (as they called it overseas) for fingerprints. He had a fine mixture of chalk and magnesium prepared for just such an eventuality. Despite the fact that he and Geung had been very careful not to touch the sword handle, it yielded no prints. Either it had been wiped clean or the killer had worn gloves. Perhaps a lesser investigator might have given up at that point, but Siri, guided by the guile of his hero Maigret of the Paris Surete, continued his curious dust down the shaft. And there he found it. One clear print at the top of the blade. He was proud of himself but had no idea what to do with his find. There may have been some simple way of recording the print but he hadn't yet learned that skill. So he put the epee on the top shelf in the storeroom and hoped the ceiling lizards wouldn't lick away his evidence.
Two tasks remained. Firstly, he would return to the scene of the crime and search for a hiding place for both a sword and a knife. Secondly, whilst there, he might even have another conversation with the Vietnamese guard who'd been given sentry duty in front of the K6 sauna. And then there was one more, very serious matter, not related to the murder. He walked to Geung who was scrubbing the overalls in the deep tub.
"Mr Geung," he said.
"Yes, Comrade Doctor?"
"Your hair."
Geung smiled. "I…I'm very sexy."
"Who did that to you?"
"It…it…it's a permanent wave. Nurse Dtui put it o…on my hair."
"And you let her?"
"I'm very ss…sexy."
"Irresistible."
"Thank you."
"I think we need to have a word with Nurse Dtui."
3
Not for any religious conviction, Sunday was a day of rest in Vientiane. It had certainly been the Sabbath when the French oppressors ruled the roost and it was a habit that carried forward even after the churches were closed and the preachers sent on their way. Although they would never admit it, there was a number of reasons for communist Vientiane to stick with old colonial trends. In fact, historically, had it not been for the French, there would have been no Vientiane in 1978.
In the sixteenth century the Lao king had moved the capital from Luang Prabang in the north to a run-down, almost indefensible ancient kingdom on the bank of the Mekhong. With all the advisors at his right hand, one might surely have mentioned the fact that on the far bank of that same river — a stretch of water sometimes so low and slow you can wade across it — lived the Thais: the mortal enemy of the Lao. To nobody's surprise, Vientiane was sacked on a number of occasions and finally left in ruins. Only its old stupas and one temple remained standing but even these had been tunnelled into and looted by scavenging Chinese bandits. And there the old city rotted, strangled by the encroaching jungle, ignored, until deep into the nineteenth century.
Enter the French. Following a treaty with the Siamese, the east bank of the Mekhong was ceded to the invaders from Europe. Vientiane was dug from the forest, replanned and rebuilt in French colonial style. Temples grew around the crippled stupas and That Luang, the soul of the Lao nation, was recreated from French missionary etchings of centuries past. The buildings were a confused mismatch of Asian frugality and modest European splendour. It was a typical South-east Asian city as conceived on a budget on a drawing board in Paris. Just as in Saigon and Phnom Penh, the colonists had always known what the locals wanted better than the natives knew themselves. And the children grew up believing that this was their style, their architecture, and they were annoyed that the hokey temples didn't make any attempt to fit it. But there it was, voila, la nouvelle Vientiane, renamed to accommodate the French inability to pronounce the original name: Viang Chan.
And now, that same Vientiane which had once been consumed by jungle was being washed away by unseasonal and unceasing rains. Like ice-cubes in a sink, the buildings seemed to be melting away, first their mustard colours, then their shapes. The streets of brown mud melded into the shop fronts and invaded front yards. The heavy hibiscus bushes sagged and spread and blended together like slowly collapsing jellies. And, in their still-religious hearts, the Vientonians, who had prayed for rain for most of the previous year, were beginning to pray for it to stop.
Sunday was the day that Daeng shut her noodle shop and she and Siri would spend all their time together. Since the early rains had begun to thunder down on the city, just negotiating the motorcycle around town had become an adventure. There were potholes so deep it was believed they tunnelled all the way through to Melbourne, Australia. There were stretches of mud so slick it was like riding on hair oil, spots where you couldn't tell the road from the river. It made the city they lived in a wonderfully unpredictable place. On this particular Sunday their plan had been to have no plan. They might just slither around town or chance the northern road to Thangon and enjoy a fish lunch by the ferry crossing. Or they might hit a submerged rock and spend the day in a motorcycle repair shop. It didn't matter either way as long as they were together.
But Inspector Phosy had other plans for them. They were eating their pre-Sunday adventure breakfast behind the loosely pulled together shutters when they heard a thump against the metal.